Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to improve the service being offered by the Child Maintenance Service.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) can play an effective role in helping lift children out of poverty. Through both family-based arrangements (FBAs) and CMS arrangements, we estimate receiving parents in separated families received £2.6 billion annually in child maintenance payments in the three financial years ending 2020 to 2022. Overall, we estimate that on average these payments kept 160,000 children out of absolute low income on an after-housing costs basis each year.

The CMS is focussed on taking pro-active steps to improve the service being offered to both potential customers and those already in the service.

In 2022 the CMS introduced a new digital service ‘Get Help arranging Child Maintenance’ (GHACHM). GHACM is a digital service, available 24/7, making it more accessible for customers.

The majority of applications are now made online. Expanded payment functions via telephony and online services have also helped to provide more options to parents.

CMS has made significant improvements in their telephony service and internal management information suggests the average time to answer calls has reduced by a third since 2021/22.

The CMS recently piloted ‘Real Time Customer Feedback’ on behalf of the department to better understand customer experience.

A Private Members’ Bill (PMB) to streamline CMS enforcement, being taken forward by Siobhan Baillie, is currently ongoing working towards a third reading in the House of Lords. The PMB removes the requirement to make court applications for liability orders which enable the CMS to progress with enforcement action, thus improving the efficiency of the enforcement process.